Single board computer Web Server

Self hosting on a single board computer

Sun, 18 Aug 2019

Single board computers are ideal for self hosting low traffic websites. A Udoo x86 single board computer that costs US174. Uses far less energy than traditional desktops. Costing as little as $10 a year to run 24/7.

Self Hosting Services

Configuring a Nginx web server to serve multiple domains and sub domains from a single ip address is not difficult. The only real limitation in self-hosting is the speed of your internet connection and the potential for downtime from power and internet outages.

If you don’t have a fixed ip address, you can use a DNS provider with api functionality to automatically update your domain ip entries when your IP changes. Zonomi provides a free DNS service with api functionaility for a single domain. Charging $US10 per year for managing up to ten domains.

If you want to use your own domain name in your email address you can use Zoho Mail. Zoho charges AUD$17 per email account, per year. Allowing you to use yourname@yourdomain.com without the complication of setting up your own email server.

Alternatively, you can use ForwardEmail.Net to forward emails from your domain, to another email address (gmail etc), for free. You only need to modify your domain record entries at Zonomi to use ForwardEmail.Net services.

Conclusion

Being able to modify my own web server without hosting restriction’s makes the effort worthwhile. Saving over $US100 a year in hosting fee’s, icing on the cake. Surprizingly, the bottleneck in my system is not the Udoo x86, but network capacity. I don’t see that as a concern for the foreseeable future.